Quick News

The 2018 US Olympic team is gender balanced in large part because of a system reform a generation ago called Title IX. Several years ago I wrote this piece on the need for a Title IX for women in politics to elect more women to office faster. While there are far more women running for office in 2018 than ever before, we need systems reforms to win parity for our daughters and our daughters' daughters (and sons).

Professor Jennifer Piscopo wrote in The New York Times this week about women's leadership in Latin America which has plateaued despite the adoption of gender quotas in recent years - most (if not all?) of the nations discussed rank above the United States in women's representation:
After President Michelle Bachelet of Chile leaves office in March, Latin America will have no female presidents.

​The year 2020 is fast-approaching so we have decided to change the name of Representation2020 to RepresentWomen. I like the simplicity of RepresentWomen and hope that you will too!
I am attending the Unrig the System conference in New Orleans this weekend where I will be speaking along side FairVote staff and an incredible line-up of other experts on various systems and the reforms needed to make democracy work better for all of us.

I wasn't planning on posting but I was reminded that Alice Paul was born on January 11, 1885 - she was an eighth-generation Quaker, who graduated from Swarthmore College and wrote the still-unratified Equal Rights Amendment:

There are six different ways in which judges get seats on state courts: merit selection, gubernatorial appointment, partisan election, nonpartisan election, legislative appointment, and court appointment.

It's been a busy start to 2018 with daily reminders of both the need for women to have an equal voice in elected/appointed offices and the potential for rapid change that coalition work makes possible.

Barbara Lee, president and founder of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, penned a terrific piece that reflects what so many of us are thinking "We don;t need another Year of the Woman. We need progress for women every year" and I would add a special emphasis that we need progress for all women every year:
Last January, after taking part in the largest single-day demonstration in recorded U.S. history, a 32-year-old emergency psychiatric screener at a New Jersey hospital spotted a Facebook post from her county official, who asked, mockingly: “Will the women's protest end in time for them to cook dinner?”
Another year, she might have just raged; instead, she ran for his seat. On November 7, Ashley Bennett, a political newcomer, unseated John Carman, a career politician.
She wasn’t alone. One year after the Women’s March, a new generation of women will be marching into office as newly-elected members of school boards, city councils and state legislatures. Their unlikely victories were made possible by thousands more women who organized, phone banked and drove their neighbors to the polls.

Phenomenal Woman
By Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.